This blog is produced by the Consortium for Project Leadership at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for anyone interested in the practical application of leadership to project management. We aim to publish meaningful articles by various authors on a monthly basis focused on stories about lessons learned in leading and managing projects.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

“He (or she) is the light of my life.” While you may have heard this
before, you know that the person described is not generating real, physical
light. You understand that this is an example of a metaphor; in this case, used
to describe someone who is special; valuable; memorable.

Metaphors are used constantly in literature and in everyday
conversation. According to the Macmillan
Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, a metaphor is “a word or phrase that means one
thing and is used for referring to another thing in order to emphasize their
similar qualities.”

Why use metaphors?
Metaphors often provide a compact vision of a phenomenon without the need to
spell out all the details. They enable people to designate characteristics that
are unnamable and direct attention to a certain interpretation of situations.
Metaphors may also help create a new interpretation of experiences by asking
the reader to see one thing in terms of something else.

Following are four metaphors that were developed by Alex and his
colleagues from Procter & Gamble (P&G), following a three-year
consulting engagement. They used the metaphors to describe the evolution of
project management models throughout the years, as the challenges faced by
project managers evolved.

Coordination & Scheduling

One can identify four distinct generations of project management models.
The first model noted as scheduling (see the table below) can be traced
to the birth of the modern notion of project management during the 1950s and
early 1960s when CPM and PERT techniques emerged. The model focuses on the
coordination of sequential and parallel activities, just as seen with major
airlines and flight scheduling problems. The scheduling model became an
effective approach for managing simple projects which are devoid of high
uncertainty.

Integration & Teamwork

A different approach evolved in the 1970s when organizations were faced
with managing complex projects, consisting of many dissimilar, highly
interdependent components, and requiring cooperation between individuals from
different disciplines. The challenge here was to ensure integration and teamwork
between participants. In this project management model, the project manager was
expected to orchestrate the manifold, complex operations much like a conductor
of a symphony orchestra.

The above two models fit squarely in a world of certainty, and can
therefore function well in an environment dominated by “geometric order.”

Decision Making & Reducing Uncertainty

However, by the 1980s it became apparent that most projects suffer from
changes and uncertainty throughout their lives. Thus, the third dominant
project management model focused on reducing uncertainty and making
stable decisions. The main tools employed to achieve this purpose were much
like those used when exploring an unknown country. These included searching for
as much relevant information as possible before and during the decision
process, and selectively building in redundancy to buffer the unforeseen.

Integrating Tasks & People

In the 1990s, however, as time to market became the driving factor, a
new project management model emerged, namely simultaneity. Effective
project managers appeared to be working disjointedly, in paradoxically opposite
directions. In reality their aim was to integrate tasks and people widely
separated in space and time, in hierarchy and methods, in orientation and
philosophy. Goals and means were not resolved sequentially and separately but
rather simultaneously and interactively. Thus the simultaneous manager operated
like the director of a three-ring circus, continuously switching acts based on
audience response.

The last two models address a world of uncertainty, addressing the needs
of an environment dominated by “living order”.

In our next blog we will present a more up to date metaphor for projects
operating in a “living order” environment.

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What is "Living Order"?

Embracing the "living order" concept is the first practice of project leadership. Leaders must be comfortable leading in today's environment of constant change. Bergson (1907) identified two types of order: the traditional concept of perfect geometric order, and living order -- which can be messy, even chaotic, with project problems and surprises in an evolving organization.